This month, the literary magazine Harper's published a new piece of fiction by Arkansas author Charles Portis. The excerpt "The Keys to Veracruz" was published in the April issue and comes from Portis' unfinished novel "The Woman from Nowhere" that was recovered in the Author's home in Little Rock a few years after his death in 2020. Deputy editor for Harper's Will Stephenson, who helped edit the story for Harper's, says the almost 7,000-word story that appears in the magazine comes from 50 pages whittled out of a nearly 400-page manuscript.
Stephenson previously lived in Little Rock and wrote for the Arkansas Times and Oxford American. He spoke with Ozarks at Large's Daniel Caruth about creating a cohesive narrative out of Portis' manuscript and his own connection to the renowned author.
